


Broken Wings

by 1JettaPug



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Spider-Man (Comicverse), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Spectacular Spider-Man (Cartoon)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Crime Fighting, Crimes & Criminals, Doctor/Patient, F/M, Fights, Friends to Lovers, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Injury Recovery, Older Man/Younger Woman, Slash, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-18 16:44:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11294655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1JettaPug/pseuds/1JettaPug
Summary: A rather rough run-in with Spider-Man makes the Vulture end up landing on a roof in Hell's Kitchen, and it lands him in the hands of Manhattan's newest nurse.





	1. Chapter 1

Georgina straightened from her bent position over the cardboard box and rubbed a hand over the small of her back. It was great reluctance that she stood up, for now she was faced with yet another view of the dismal New York City apartment that defined her new life.

Outside, the shrill pierce of a siren came and then faded. A truck rumbled by, probably rattling the windows in the apartment downstairs, followed by a car alarm and a loud, impatient honk. Gina smiled weakly. God, she was going to have to get used to that noise now, wasn't she?

Unfortunately, she couldn't complain too much. She lived close to the subway, and she had a bus stop right on the corner of her street. Good thing, too, since it would have cost waaaay too much for her to own a car now.

At least she was saved a lot of expenses by moving right into Manhattan. No one was flocking into Manhattan anymore, they were all going to Queens. Gina didn't quite care where everyone said the new best place to live was. She managed to snag a decent apartment in an up-and-coming borough near a little family owned coffee shop.

Her eye twitched a little bit when yet another car alarm started going off, and she sat down on her old paisley couch. She felt like getting some fresh air, feeling very tired after getting all of her things into her apartment. Maybe she would go up to the roof for a little while, try to breathe in some of that 'fresh' New York City air.

She locked the door to her place before climbing up a flight of stairs to the rooftop.

Gina looked out over the little view her apartment building could afford to give her. It wasn't much, but she figured it could have been a hell of lot worse. She figured it must have been decent enough since her landlord didn't stop bragging about the time she saw a vigilante called 'Daredevil' standing up here surveying Hell's Kitchen.

Gina just nodded politely, having only heard about the superhero craziness that went on up north. They had superhero nonsense down where she used to live, but they didn't have anything like New York did.

She had recently moved up to New York from Virginia to finish her uncle's funeral arrangements and put him to rest. She decided to stay because she didn't have any family left, and she figured New York City might be a good place to really kick-start her career in the medical field. Sure, she would miss her sleepy little town, but she had a good feeling about her decision.

Yeah, she thought. I can do this.

Gina turned around, ready to go face all the boxes she had yet to unpack, ready to get her furniture just where she wanted it, ready to see a bleeding man leaning beside the edge of the roof-

Wait!

She paused and blinked.

"Jesus Christ!"

Okay, to be fair, she didn't expected this after she came up here for a quick breather. He looked like he was bleeding out and barely breathing. She felt her body move before she could think of what to do. She pulled him up, found him to be incredibly light- much lighter than he appeared to be- and began to carry him down the stairs.

After struggling to open the door to her apartment and hold the man steady on her back, she finally managed to get them inside. She attempted to grab her phone to call 911 from the kitchen counter, but the blood seeping onto her sweater from his bleeding sides made her put all her focus on him.

Gina carefully laid him on the sofa and stepped back to try to assess the damage. He was absolutely caked in blood. Hence her cry of "Jesus Christ!"

She was only stunned for a brief moment, but she quickly snapped out of it. Gina took in a deep breath. That uncontrollable bleeding had to stop right now if he was going to make it. She grabbed herself a pair of latex-gloves from her bathroom and began to get to work.

Quickly, she zipped down his strange, green one-piece outfit down to his hips. The white t-shirt underneath was blood-soaked, and she hiked up and began applying pressure to his wound on his stomach. She huffed. While right now might not have been the best time, she had to admit it, the man looked like he had been skewered through the side.

"Jeeze, what the hell happened to you?" she asked, more so to keep herself calm than anything else. Her eyes trail down the arms of his outfit and notice the broken blades hanging off his arms. They were bent and broken in all sorts of directions, but none of them were covered with blood. She gently pulled his arms out of his sleeves and gasped when she saw a handprint shaped bruised around his bicep. Whoever crushed through all the layers of his armored jumpsuit really wanted this man dead...

Her hands kept working, but her eyes found themselves looking up at his face. The man looked so tired. He simply looked so dead tired with those dark circles around his eyes and some noticeable wrinkles underneath them. He had a split lip, a black eye, possibly bruised ribs, she said to herself mentally. Gina shook her head. "Who did this to you?"

The man just was lucky that she just happened to be very good at dressing wounds, she's done it one too many times. The good news was that the wound wasn't was bad as she thought it was. She finished it off by laying the antibiotic cream and gauze over the wound, tapping it in place.

Now might be a good time to call, she thought. She started to walk over and grab her phone off the kitchen counter, but a sudden groan caught her off guard. The man was starting to stir.

"Sir, sir," Gina kneeled down beside him, gently placing her hands on his arm to keep him from rolling off the couch. "Sir-" He turned to her and grabbed her throat. She clawed at his hands, even though he wasn't trying to lift her or shove her down to the floor.

"W- Where am I...?" he asked, his voice raspy.

"H- Hell's K- Kitchen," she gasped. She found his grip was weakening, and he let go of her. Jeeze, why couldn't she end up with the nice, beaten and bleeding super person on her roof. "You were just lyin' there on my roof! I- I patched you up, but I was just about to call for h- help-"

"I don't need a hospital," he growled, lowly.

"B- But you're-"

"No."

Gina just nodded. "O- Okay, no hospitals." she sighed. "Good thing I'm a nurse, then." It could have been worse for him. He could have ended with the person who wasn't a clinically trained nurse. But this wasn't a waiting room was full of sniffly-nosed children or whimpering babies. 

This was her living room. This was an older man who had bleeding on her couch. This was insane.

Then again... New York City was home to a man who flew around in an iron suit, a man dressed in red leather who beat the shit out of criminals in her neighborhood and a spider person who could be seen swinging around the city.

The man shifted and tried to sit up before Gina could stop him. It's a mistake. 

He gave a sharp, pained cry. Gina expected that, but she managed to catch him before his body fell back on the couch. "Be careful," she told him, needlessly. "I just stopped the bleedin'." She glanced up at him, he looked shaky and pale. "Y- You okay?"

"I've been stabbed," he snapped back, "How do you think I feel?!" He managed to shove rudeness, sarcasm and exhaustion all into the same tone.

She frowned at him. "Hey," she barked. "A little respect for the woman who decided to drag your bloody ass off the roof and patch you up." She reached for his shirt and started to pull it up to his chest before he bat at her hands. "I'm tryin' to see if you're bleedin' anywhere else."

"It's just the one spot." he told her, but she yanked the shirt up anyway.

Gina's eyes widened at the scars and bruises that littered the man's body. "Jeeze," she said after a long pause. "How's the other guy look if you're beat up this bad?" Her eyes looked over his lithe waist, noticing how many of the darker bruises rested there.

But she wasn't going to try to ask questions from the man who attempted to strangle her not even ten minutes ago.

"You need stitches," she said.

"No hospit-"

"Butcha need-" She blinked and felt the cold metal of a blade against her throat. Her heart all but stopped. Gina took in a deep breath and watched as he gripped her arm and held it firmly in place. "Don't-"

"Don't what?" he hissed, cutting her off. She knew that tone, it was the tone of a man who was not- _not_ going back to whatever hellhole he was thrown down.

"Don't hurt me," she said, trying to keep the tears from leaking out of her eyes. She honestly felt like crying, though. The first time she helped someone in New York- after moving there from Virginia- and she was going to die for her kind efforts.

She took in another deep breath and exhaled. "I- I was gonna finish patchin' you up! I can't much do that if I'm dead."

The rough hand around her arm started to slack ever so slightly. "You are going to 'patch me up'?" he asked, eyes narrowing at her face.

Gina nodded. "Y- Yes," she told him. "I'm an experienced nurse. I can help you. J- Just put the, ah, the wing thingy down... It is a wing, isn't it?" she asked.

He turned his head at her. "You're new here, aren't you?" he asked her.

"I've been here 'bout a month now." she said, honestly. He tsked at her and the knife was pulled away from her neck. He let her arm go, then carefully sat back on the couch. 

"I'll be right back." Gina said, glancing at the blood smears covering his torso. She stood up and looked down at him. "Don't, ah, try to move too much."

"Don't even try to reach for your phone then." he muttered, resting his bald head back on a pillow.

"I'm just gonna go get a cloth for all the blood." she sighed. "You got blood all over my floor and couch."

"Oh like this paisley couch wasn't ruined before I got blood on it..."

She craned her neck around to give him a look. That better be the blood loss talking, she thought. "That was my grandmother's couch."

"And it should have been buried with her." he murmured.

Gina paused and clicked her tongue. "I didn't ask how you felt 'bout it. But I wasn't gonna let an injured man rest on the floor. That wouldn't help you.” she said firmly.

He let out a long-suffering sigh, “Fine. But don’t complain to me when I get blood all over your beloved couch, miss.”

“No problem, I’ll just send you the cleanin' bill."

He did not decide to make comment this time.

She went to her bathroom and took out a few wash cloths, needle and thread from the boxes in there. She headed towards the kitchen, avoided her phone cause his eyes were on her, and grabbed a big bowl from the cabinet and began to fill it with warm water from the sink. Gina took in a deep breath. His eyes were just watching her every move, like some kind of _vulture_.

She shivered.

She got the very distinct and chilling feeling that she was now his prey, too.

Well, she thought, I'm not going to let it bother me... too much anyway.

Gina set the bowl on the floor beside the couch and dipped a cloth in the water. "The gauze was just there to make sure you didn't bleed out before I could call 911," she told him, watching him squint his eyes at her. "But since you said no hospitals..." She carefully ripped the gauze off, ignoring his sharp cry of pain as she did so.

She wiped his wound as gently as she could, but his fidgeting was getting very, very annoying. He held his arm over his face while she worked, cursing up a storm while she cleaned him up. Gina threw the bloodied cloth in the bowl and picked up her needle and thread. She started stitching up his side, trying to make the process as easy and painless as she could.

"So you got a name, stranger?" she asked, finding a need to make conversation suddenly.

"Toomes," he muttered. "Adrian Toomes."

"Well, it's, ah, nice to meet you, Adrian." Gina said, finishing stitching the wound on his side up.

"And your name...?" He asked, bringing his arm down and looking at her.

"W- What?" She glanced up at him.

"Do you _got a name, stranger_?" he mocked her. "If only because I already told you mine." She was seriously starting to wonder if this was how he normally acted or this was just his _sparkling_ personality. She was also seriously wondering why she was even bothering to help him still. Her eyes paid a glance to the blades on his arms, and she shook her head. That's a good enough reason, she thought to herself.

"My name is Georgina Jones," she sighed, pulling his shirt back down over his skinny torso. "But you can call me Gina for short." She stood back up and grabbed the bowl and cloths from the floor. "Now don't you move any. I don't wanna have to stitch you back up again."

“Mmhmm, thanks,” Adrian muttered under his breath, tiredly. “But I think I’ll get out of your apartment and out of your life now, Georgina.” He doesn’t move though, not immediately.

“You're not goin' nowhere in your condition.” she told him, strictly. “You move right now, there's a good chance you'll wind up dead before next mornin'.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, but there’s no real protest left in his tone; his head is drooping as he sits, he looks like he could fall asleep right there. Gina just shook her head at him.

"Adrian," she said. "If you're worried that I'm gonna call the cops, then I promise that I won't. Listen, as far as I'm concerned you're an injured man who just refused to go to the hospital. The last thing you need are some cops bargin' in here and bustin' your head in and rippin' open your stitches."

He laughed. He just started laughing at her. "You're going to let a mysterious injured man- a stranger at that- sleep on your couch?! You really are new here!” he said firmly.

Gina let out a long-suffering sigh and asked, "Do you want to _die_ , Adrian?”

He visibly stiffened and went silent.

"That's what I thought," she murmured.

Slowly, she walked back into her kitchen, threw the cloths in the garbage can and dumped the bloody water down the sink. “Hey, I'm gonna finish unpackin' my things, but I’ll try and be quiet and let you get to sleep.”

"Sleep? I don't nee-" She cut him off.

"Adrian, you look like you've been hit by a bus." Gina told him, plain and simple. "Try to get some rest and try to stop testin' my hospitality."

"You're insane," he said, shaking his head. "Trusting a stranger in your apartment."

"Maybe it's strange for you New Yorkers, what with guys like that 'Punisher' runnin' around shootin' guys," Gina snapped. "But I trust you not to injure and/or kill the woman who saved your life."

Once more, he lowered his head and went quiet.

She sighed, putting her hands on her hips. Okay, she could do this. She was going to unpack her boxes, move her furniture just where she wanted it (besides the couch, of course) and make sure the man on the couch didn't try to move and rip open his stitches.

Welcome to New York, she thought to herself.


	2. Chapter 2

“So you don't even own real plates?” Gina turned her head so she could see him squinting at her bare open cupboards.

“They're buried in one of these boxes...” she told him. "Just gotta find out which one it is." Gina huffed, glancing through the drawers and cabinets.

Toomes, without missing a beat, said, “Good luck with that.”

She sent him a look, then set to work on completing her apartment.

It was dark by the time her apartment looked to be in some semblance of order, and Gina declared that she was so done for the day. She grabbed some lunchmeat from the fridge and made herself a sandwich. Before she knew what she was doing, she made a second sandwich for her "guest". Gina fished out a bag of pretzels and two bottles of water from a box sitting on the counter, then walked back towards Toomes.

"Here," she said, setting his paper plate on his waist and the water on the floor. "It's not exactly five-stars, but at least Gordon Ramsay wouldn't say that the turkey is under-cooked."

He gave her a flat look. "I prefer mayo with my turkey sandwiches."

She returned the look. "I don't like mayo."

"Who doesn't like mayo?"

"A lot of people. Besides, it's better than hospital food so don't complain." Gina set her own meal down on a box beside her armchair and sat down. She grabbed her laptop from its bag on the floor and pulled it up.

"What are you doing?" he asked, quickly sitting up.

"Googling you," Gina replied.

"Honestly?" She couldn't tell if that was exasperation or exhaustion in his voice, so she went with both.

"Yup," she logged onto her laptop. It whirred and clicked for a couple of moments before finally turning on. Her nails hit the keys, and she searched up his name on Google. "Huh," she glanced up at him. "So should I call you Adrian or the _Vulture_?"

"Whichever you prefer," he shrugged, his face remaining neutral as she looked up information about him.

"You robbed Park Avenue Diamond Exchange, several other places," Gina said. "Attempted to kill Norman Osborn, caused tons of property damage to the Daily Bugle... This Mr. Jameson person really starts to go on a rant about all the damage you did to the Bugle."

Toomes scoffed, "Bah! Jameson is simply a loud, boisterous fool who wishes to pester every criminal and Spider-Man at every opportunity."

"Can't argue with you so far," Gina frowned. "There's several paragraphs about you, but there's plenty more about how Spider-Man is a menace."

"He is a menace!"

Gina rolled her eyes. "You say that because he put you in jail multiple times."

He glared at her for a few more moments before finally turning his attention to his meal. He chewed at a slow pace, his eyes still glued on her just in case she tried something.

Gina felt her skin crawl after five minutes of his constant staring. It was like he was burning holes into her.

She glanced up at him, "Either you stop starin' or I'm gonna put on a Disney movie just for background noise."

"You haven't plugged your TV in yet." he said.

"Don't think I won't." she shot back.

Toomes bristled where he sat and then rested back on the couch. "And they call me a criminal..." he muttered.

Gina sighed, softly. "Just... Just get some rest, Adrian."

It was Gina who actually fell asleep.

She woke up and her hair was sticking up at odd angles and there was the imprint of a pillow crease on the side of her face. God, how the hell had she just fallen asleep with her legs crossed in the chair? Now she wouldn't be able to move her legs for an hour. Fantastic.

Her laptop had gone into sleep mode on her lap and her half eaten sandwich rested on the keyboard. She wanted to groan. She would be picking crumbs out of it for weeks.

She ran her hands down her face and through her hair before she looked up at the couch.

_"Shit,"_

Her patient was missing.

Her _criminal_ patient was missing!

"Toomes!?" she called out. "Vulture!?"

It was so strange! If it were not for the blood stains on the floor and couch, then Gina swore that she never even had a criminal in her apartment.

She let go of a breath that she didn't even know she was holding in. She picked up her sandwich and tossed it back on its paper plate, then shut her laptop.

That was when she noticed the note that was taped to the top of it.

Written ever so eloquently was a simple, **_Thank you_**

Gina blinked.

First off, was it too late to get her deposit back? Second, a criminal knows where she lives. Third, she didn't really know how to feel about that since he thanked her. Did that mean she didn't have to worry about him killing her? Would he kill her? God, she didn't know!

And yet...

When her eyes trailed back down towards the note, she didn't feel as fearful as she knew she probably should have.

Gina held her head in her hands. She pushed all of that to the back of her mind. Right now she wanted two things: coffee and a shower. She couldn't care which order they came in.


End file.
